Share this story

Over its short life, the editor has made itself remarkably popular, with Microsoft saying it has been installed more than two million times, with half a million active users. It has also grown from a Web-oriented text editor geared toward JavaScript and TypeScript developers into a much more capable multi-language development and debugging tool. Extension support was added less than six months ago, and a healthy range of extensions has already been developed. These extensions have been used to greatly extend the number of languages that Code works with, expanding it from its Web origins to handle C++, Go, Python, PHP, F#, and many more options.

Visual Studio Code is arguably one of the projects that most demonstrates the "new" Microsoft. Code is MIT-licensed open source, and Microsoft is continuing to try to do its open source development the right way—not merely dumping periodic code drops on the outside world but actually working with the broader developer community to fix bugs and develop new features. Some 300 outside contributions have been merged in, making it far more than just a Microsoft project. It also continues to be a solid cross-platform app, running on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Behind the scenes, Code uses Web technology; it's built on top of the Chromium browser and node.js, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The same editor, named Monaco, is also found in various online, browser-based services, including Visual Studio Team Services, Bing Code Search, and the F12 tools in Edge.